German discounter Lidl offered two computers as part of its regular Thursday mini-sale. As far as one of the computers is concerned, it definitely was a mini-sale!

Lidl offered a desktop and a subnotebook. I was interested in the subnotebook. It had a 12 inch diagonal screen, making it just about the largest size you can use when sitting in economy class on a plane. It offered a 60 gigabyte hard disk, 512 megs of RAM and some other interesting features, and the price was only 699 € – a good deal, I thought. This unit was advertized at Lidl when "World News & Prophecy" managing editor Darris McNeely and I visited Berlin, but the unit was not going to be sold in my area near Bonn. When I saw Lidl’s website announcing the unit for today in my area, I thought I would get there right at opening time. Actually, I was there a few minutes early, and I was surprised to notice that the main door was already unlocked. I went immediately to the area where Lidl stores these products, and a young fellow was already there. I said, "I bet you are here for that subnotebook!" He said he was and that the manager had just gone to get it for him. He offered to call him back to tell him to bring another one out for me. But guess what? Lidl only had one unit for this big sale. So I came out empty-handed. They called another Lidl store nearby – this was 5 minutes after opening, mind you – and the only subnotebook delivered there had also already been purchased. "What an advertizing promotion!" the manager said sarcastically as I left the store. To be fair, Lidl’s website does say that the item may be sold out the first day. But within the first minute? Yes, it really was a "mini" sale – 1 unit!